Made in Virginia 2012: Foggy Ridge Cider, Dugspur

Foggy Ridge Cider

Foggy Ridge Cider

In 1997, Diane Flynt left her career as a banking executive and moved some 3,000 feet up the Blue Ridge Mountains to the town of Dugspur. Her plan? To grow apples. Today, her company, Foggy Ridge Cider, is selling to hundreds of restaurants, wine stores, gourmet shops and high-end grocery stores around the state.

The secret is that Flynt selects her Foggy Ridge fruit with the same care a vintner gives to her grapes. “About a third of the apples we grow here aren’t even edible,” says Flynt, 59. “There’s too much tannin or acidity.” But those apples are perfect for blending into full-flavored, fresh, crisp, hard ciders of which Foggy Ridge currently produces four varieties—including First Fruit, made with Thomas Jefferson’s favorite Virginia heirloom apple, the Hewe’s Crab—as well as two types of apple port.

Weekend visitors to Dugspur can sample the fruit of Flynt’s work in the Foggy Ridge tasting room from March through December. Plenty of Blue Ridge tourists do, and Flynt happily converts them into cider aficionados. “People might buy my cider once because they know Thomas Jefferson drank it,” she says. “But they buy it a second time because it’s delicious.” $16 a bottle.